Doomed by Quality, but Not Concept

Sad to say, the only surprise about the closing of “Holler if Ya Hear Me,” the new musical featuring the songs of the rapper Tupac Shakur, was that it didn’t come earlier. When the show opened to downbeat reviews on June 19, many expected it would close within a week.

The production, directed by this year’s Tony winner Kenny Leon (“A Raisin in the Sun”), had been doing dismal business in previews; there were reports that it wouldn’t make it to opening night. After hanging on for a few weeks with no improvement in ticket sales, the producers announced on Monday that the show would end its brief run on Sunday, after just 17 previews and 38 regular performances. Most, if not all, of its $8 million capitalization will be lost.

In an interview he gave to Variety when “Holler” was on the ropes but before the closing announcement, the show’s lead producer, Eric L. Gold, said, “If we don’t succeed, it’s going to be very difficult to do another rap or hip-hop show on Broadway,” suggesting that producers would cite the show’s failure as proof that Broadway audiences — who are overwhelmingly white — resisted “Holler” because they found the music unfamiliar or unappealing.

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Saul Williams in “Holler if Ya Hear Me,” with Tupac Shakur songs.CreditSara Krulwich/The New York Times

The truth is that it’s difficult to make a success of just about any big musical on Broadway that doesn’t arrive with either a market-tested brand name, or gushing reviews from London, or both. Shakur, despite selling millions of albums both before and after his death in 1996, is not a name that would naturally resonate with most Broadway audiences. Opening “Holler” cold on Broadway, without a regional theater tryout to work out the kinks (the Alliance Theater in Atlanta, where Mr. Leon was artistic director for more than 10 years, would have been a natural choice), was a risky, ultimately unwise decision. A better show would have had a much better chance of making it.

I’ll grant that Shakur’s songs, with their raw language and dense lyrics, are not an easy fit for a Broadway musical. Still, the concept was audacious and intriguing. Mr. Leon and Todd Kreidler, who wrote the book, deserve credit for trying to expand the repertoire of the Broadway musical, which has embraced forms of rock and pop music in recent decades. Back in the ’90s, George C. Wolfe had a substantial Broadway hit with the black history revue “Bring in Da Noise, Bring in Da Funk,” which employed music not that distant from Shakur’s. It ran for almost three years after transferring from the Public Theater.

In truth, the problem with “Holler” wasn’t really the music at all, but the ham-handed, sentimentalized story line concocted to underpin it. I tended to perk up during the musical numbers, which capitalized on the forceful rhythms of Shakur’s raps, layered over music that often had a strong melodic core. Then I’d sink back into my seat when the clichéd narrative ground back into gear, telling us what we already knew about the travails of young black men in the ghetto, trying to resist the toxic environment to forge viable futures for themselves. The characters — the ex-con trying to go straight, the drug lord beginning to question the path he’d chosen — were underwritten and familiar, and while the cast members were strong, there was little they could do to imprint any true originality on the material.

I don’t think the failure of “Holler” will dampen attempts to build Broadway musicals around hip-hop or R&B or even rap. “In the Heights,” which featured some rap written and performed by Lin-Manuel Miranda, had a successful Broadway run, winning the Tony Award for best musical and becoming a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. There is already excited buzz around Mr. Miranda’s next project, a musical about Alexander Hamilton that relies on rap and hip-hop and that will be seen at the Public Theater this winter. As Patrick Healy reported in The New York Times, the show is likely to transfer to Broadway if it is well received. (A rap musical about a “founding father”? Now that’s original.)

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“Holler if Ya Hear Me,” with music by Tupac Shakur and direction by the Tony winner Kenny Leon, is closing on Sunday after a short run on Broadway.CreditSara Krulwich/The New York Times

Still, the failure of “Holler,” following on the heels of the financial failure of “After Midnight,” the terrific revue inspired by the music of the fabled Cotton Club, does suggest that Broadway has yet to find a way to reach black audiences in large numbers. Put Denzel Washington in a classic play — this season’s “A Raisin in the Sun” or August Wilson’s “Fences” — and black audiences (and white ones, too) line up to pay the hefty Broadway ticket prices north of $100. But these same audiences didn’t show up in large enough numbers for either “Midnight,” despite its rave reviews, or the less liked but more contemporary “Holler.”

In the end, it wasn’t the concept but the quality that was the problem with “Holler.” Broadway producers will always remain hungry for strong material, even if it pushes the boundaries of musical theater. Perhaps particularly if it pushes those boundaries, since shows with more traditional scores — “The Bridges of Madison County” and “Big Fish” — flopped pretty spectacularly on Broadway last season.

I’d be willing to bet that should Jay Z evince any interest in shaping his music for repurposing as a Broadway musical, producers would be falling all over themselves to climb aboard.

Actually, if I weren’t precluded from doing so, I would be tempted to invest myself.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page C1 of the New York edition with the headline: Doomed by Quality, but Not Concept. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe